Notes from the Field - Our Fantastic Field Crew

ABOVE (FROM LEFT TO RIGHT): Maricela, Lauren, Amber, and Hector

Unless you get lucky, you might not have a chance to meet this year's field crew. They are a humble and elusive bunch. They work 8 AM to 4 PM five days a week on the farm, and they don't take a lot of credit for what they do. They started just after the first week of the CSA in June, and they'll work with us for two more weeks, finishing up the tomato harvest and launching into the sweet potato pick after completing our final round of transplanting (lettuce, tatsoi, bok choy and chard for our winter shares) late last week. They have seeded in the greenhouse, planted in the field, weeded, moved irrigation pipe, turned electric fences on and off, weeded some more, planted some more, and picked thousands of pounds of beautiful vegetables every single day, in pouring rain and blistering heat, sweltering humidity and chilly clear mornings. While they occasionally peek in to the vegetable distribution barn on a Tuesday or a Thursday, mostly they walk through the fields at the end of the day to harvest a few veggies to take home, then vanish quietly. But you should know who they are, and how they have impacted the farm this season. We couldn't do it without them.

Hector Cruz wrote to us in his application for the position that he was a "mature person", not a young person, and that he was mentioning this because he himself does not like surprises and did not want to surprise us. He takes public transportation two hours each way to get to the farm from his home in East Boston, where he lives with his wife, two children, and a beautiful garden that he calls "Hector's Farm" and Maricela calls a shrine. He has a scientific and poetic mind, an unstoppable work ethic, a beautiful singing voice and an impish sense of humor. He is early to work every single day. Hector is kind, curious, a great teacher, an thoughtful colleague, and the undisputed boss of the farm kitchen, where he eats his beautiful, well-balanced, mostly vegan meals with impeccable manners. He is always at your elbow, asking "what can I do to help"?

Many people who apply for field crew positions call themselves "avid cyclists" and declare that they will be able to arrive at the farm by bicycle every morning able to work a full day in the fields. Maricela Escobar is one of the few folks we've known who can actually pull it off, with the help of a few chocolate chips here and there. Maricela constantly challenges all of us on the farm to be true to our principles, or to rethink them. She is a true radical, with a loving heart and a passion for social justice, art, and nourishment for the body and soul. We have had some of the most interesting, honest, and difficult conversations in the fields because of Maricela's honesty and willingness to push us beyond our usual limits this season, although there are many more we could have had. Maricela's powerful connections with Boston's bicycle, art and activist communities, and her network of family and friends, help keep her immense energy up despite her many commitments.

Amber Sandager came to us with a background in roller derby and public relations and a deep interest in nutritious eating. She has been a bit taken aback by the amount of sugar farmers consume during the season, but she's gamely tried her best to keep up with the rest of us while still eating healthy. Dirt, bugs and humidity are definitely well out of Amber's comfort zone (she's a desert girl who grew up in New Mexico), but she has proved herself willing and able to take on just about anything, and keep us all updated on pop culture, current television, and the Boston restaurant scene. Her patience and diligence with the unfamiliar work of the farm have paid off this season, as she has become faster and more graceful every week.

Lauren Trotogott is just a plain hard worker. You know you have a hard worker in your midst when you hire a bartender; you just aren't sure how they're going to handle the early mornings. Lauren is one of the few who can pull it off. She can work the bar at Legal Seafoods in the evenings and still bunch kale with the best of them in the morning. To call someone solid, reliable, and competent can sound like middle-of-the-road faint praise, but when it comes to farming, this kind of commendation is as high as it gets. Lauren is the one you want on your farm crew when times get tough, when you have rotten tomatoes to sort, 2000 pounds of food to load onto a truck in 15 minutes, or a big harvest to bring in. She's mentally one step ahead of us most of the time, but she's physically present every moment to do whatever needs to be done, and to do it as well as she possibly can.

These four individuals, as different as they could possibly be, have made our farm season more productive and, as important, more fun. We are very much looking forward to our final two weeks with them this season, and to seeing what adventures they take on in the weeks and months to come. If you are fortunate enough to catch a glimpse of them in the next week or two, be sure to say hello and thank you to the folks who made this season possible. We are grateful and proud to call them our co-workers and friends.

Enjoy the harvest,

Amanda, for the farm staff

Notes from the Field: July

July. Vacation time for many people, but not so much for farmers. Long, hot days perfect for vegetable growing. Garlic harvest, tomato tying, broccoli planting, irrigating, cultivating -- there's a reason I can't remember much about July from year to year. This is nature's peak season, every square inch of ground teeming with life and the harvest beginning to pour in.

July is not a time of the year that's commonly thought of as a time to tinker or experiment for farmers. Generally we are going full speed ahead implementing a plan we created in January, just trying to keep our heads above water and get as much done as we can before tomato harvests fill the afternoons. Last week, though, both Dan and I got projects done that we had had on our lists for -- well, for years. Dan used an old 55 gallon drum to turn our homemade transplanter into a water wheel. The water wheel adds a little water to the hole it creates for each plant as it goes into the ground, very important for fall broccoli and cabbage transplanted in the heat of summer. We are lucky enough to have overhead irrigation, which we've been using often during this hot weather to water in transplants, but overhead has its drawbacks too -- it splashes soil, which can cause plant leaf diseases (especially on crops that are in the ground for a couple of months, like those fall brassicas), and helps weeds as much as crops, since it's watering the whole bed. The water wheel gives a little starter water to the plant while keeping the rest of the field clean and dry, at least until the next thunderstorm.  So why haven't we finished this project before? July. It's one of the classic "if it's not raining, my roof doesn't leak, and if it is raining, I can't fix it" conundrums. For most the rest of the year, we can time our transplanting around upcoming rain, or use existing soil moisture and cool temperatures to help establish plants; in July, when we need the water wheel, it's July.

The other project we finished last week is similar -- I spent an hour reconfiguring our boom sprayer so that it could fold properly to travel between the rows of tomatoes to spray organically approved fungicides if weather conditions warrant. Those of you who remember the late blight epidemic of 2009 will know that this has been on my mind since then. So why this year? Why this July? The answer is one you all should be aware of: weed crew, and field crew.

2012 is the third year that we've had a designated, paid weed crew who come in at eight every weekday and handweed or hoe or clip weeds until noon. We'll talk more about weeds on our farm in upcoming newsletters, but for now suffice it to say that this crew has completely changed the way we're able to spend our time on the farm. This year, Annabelle, Becca, Katy, Meghan and Maura have been diligently working since the beginning of June on each exacting planting of carrots, the daunting giant field of onions at the Lyman Estate, the quick-and-dirty work of cleaning up the cherry tomatoes as we are tying them, and every other weeding project on the farm. They've had help from some volunteer groups and from our own bookkeeper, Deb, who is keeping our flower garden meticulously clean. On our farm, the weeding is never really done. In general, though, these women are the reason that shareholders can find sugar snap peas in the pick-your-own and that we can harvest carrots without wading through waist-high weeds (we've done it -- no fun). They are independent, unendingly cheerful, incredibly dedicated, and basically, the reason that we can work on other projects in July. We can't thank them enough.

Our field crew, who started on the farm on June 19, have already taken our work to the next level. Their first week it was 95 degrees for three days in a row. It poured rain all day on their first Monday, and thunder and lightning chased them out of the field for an hour. They picked all day long, learning the ins and outs of harvesting crops as delicate as carrots and spinach and as tricky as beets. They pounded tomato stakes, tied tomatoes, transplanted chard, beets, lettuce, squash, and okra, direct seeded watermelons to replace a diseased crop at our Gateways field, and moved irrigation. All in their first two weeks on the farm.

When we thought about this year last winter, we knew that these first two weeks of July would be a critical point in our season. Making sure that all of our tomatoes were staked and tied at the same time as we were transplanting more than a full acre of fall brassicas, with the garlic harvest, earlier every year, likely right in the middle of all of it, has always been a time when we get behind on other tasks -- it's a juggling act that often ends with one or more balls dropped and rolling off into the weeds, never to be found again until the fall. Oops, never got a second string on the cherry tomatoes. Oops, a little late getting those beds made for the second round of broccoli. Oops, missed a planting of lettuce. It's July.

By last Friday, though, Alison, Anna, Cat and Dave had put us in a position where not only are the balls still in the air, but we seem to be developing some sense of rhythm in our juggling. Thanks to them, Sutton and Zannah were able to prepare all seventy-plus beds for the fall brassicas, disking, chiseling, adding alfalfa meal and basketing them down, so that when the plants are ready to go into the ground later this week, there is a beautifully prepared field waiting for them. We'll start our garlic harvest later today, with any luck, pulling the bulbs and bringing them in to dry down in our big greenhouse until they are properly cured and ready to use. And the weather -- well, we can't complain. Really. It's a long season -- it's not even the All-Star break yet -- and there's a lot of work still to come, but right now we are joyfully rolling along in a July that feels better than it has in a while. Thank you, thank you, thank you, Alison, Annabelle, Anna, Becca, Cat, Dave, Katie, Meghan and Maura. We could not do it without you.



Enjoy the harvest,



Amanda (for the farm crew)